A Health and Fitness Blog

“The bottom line is that these (soy foods) are not nutrients. They are drugs.” — Dr. Lon R. White

Despite this scary truth, many people have come to believe that soy is healthy; even a miracle food. We can thank a massive marketing campaign by the soy industry for this false belief.

As Lierre Keith points out in The Vegetarian Myth, “This is what you are eating when you eat soy: an industrial waste product. Soy as it grows in the field is not actually a low-fat paragon. It’s about 30 percent fat. Once upon a time it was grown for its oil–not because people ate it, but because it was used for paint and glue. In 1913, the USDA listed soy as an industrial material, not as a food.”

Call me crazy, but I have no desire to consume anything that was once listed as an industrial material and was used for paint and glue.

Here is a list of the dangers of soy, as summarized by the Weston A. Price Foundation (I have inserted my own comments in parentheses):

High levels of phytic acid (phytates are antinutrients that bind with minerals in your digestive track) in soy reduce assimilation of calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc. Phytic acid in soy is not neutralized by ordinary preparation methods such as soaking, sprouting and long, slow cooking. High phytate diets have caused growth problems in children.

Trypsin inhibitors (Trypsin is an important digestive enzyme produced by the pancreas) in soy interfere with protein digestion and may cause pancreatic disorders. In test animals soy containing trypsin inhibitors caused stunted growth.

Soy phytoestrogens (phytoestrogens are an estrogen-like compound produced by over 300 plants, with soy being the only one that humans eat) disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women.

Soy phytoestrogens are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.

Vitamin B12 analogs in soy are not absorbed and actually increase the body’s requirement for B12.

Soy foods increase the body’s requirement for vitamin D.

Fragile proteins are denatured (Denature: To cause the tertiary structure of a protein to unfold, as with heat, alkali, or acid, so that some of its original properties, especially its biological activity, are diminished or eliminated) during high temperature processing to make soy protein isolate and textured vegetable protein.

Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine (lysinoalanine is an unusual amino acid) and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines (nitrosamines are a chemical compound).

Free glutamic acid or MSG, a potent neurotoxin, is formed during soy food processing and additional amounts are added to many soy foods.

Soy foods contain high levels of aluminum which is toxic to the nervous system and the kidneys.

If after reading all the above dangers of soy, you still think it’s OK to feed your infant soy formula, please keep reading.

Lierre Keith states, “What happens to babies fed soy formula? First, soy formula provides 38 mg of isoflavones a day. That’s a hormone load equivalent to that of three to five birth control pills each and every day. That number was derived from Swiss Federal Health Service data, data they published with warnings. Are you warned yet? Daniel Sheehan, who was a Senior Toxicologist at the FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research, thinks you should be. He says that infant soy formula is a ‘large, uncontrolled and basically unmonitored human infant experiment.'”

Soy infant formula is birth control for babies. Below is a list of the dangers of soy infant formula as summarized by Soy Online Service:

Babies fed soy-based formula have 13,000 to 22,000 times more estrogen compounds in their blood than babies fed milk-based formula.

Infants exclusively fed soy formula receive the estrogenic equivalent of at least five birth control pills per day.

Male infants undergo a “testosterone surge” during the first few months of life, when testosterone levels may be as high as those of an adult male. During this period, baby boys are programmed to express male characteristics after puberty, not only in the development of their sexual organs and other masculine physical traits, but also in setting patterns in the brain characteristic of male behavior.

Pediatricians are noticing greater numbers of boys whose physical maturation is delayed, or does not occur at all, including lack of development of the sexual organs. Learning disabilities, especially in male children, have reached epidemic proportions.

Soy infant feeding—which floods the bloodstream with female hormones that inhibit testosterone—cannot be ignored as a possible cause for these tragic developments. In animals, soy feeding indicates that phytoestrogens in soy are powerful endocrine disrupters.

Almost 15 percent of white girls and 50 percent of African-American girls show signs of puberty such as breast development and pubic hair, before the age of eight. Some girls are showing sexual development before the age of three. Premature development of girls has been linked to the use of soy formula and exposure to environmental estrogens such as PCBs and DDE.

Despite what the soy industry would love to have you believe, soy is no health food, and it is certainly no miracle food. It is a drug and I would stay far away from it.

About

Neil Holland is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine as a Personal Trainer. Since 2003, he has been helping people realize their physical fitness potential, so they can enjoy a healthier lifestyle and a higher quality of life.